Turkish allegations of Saudi, Emirati and Egyptian support for the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) threaten to turn Turkey's military offensive against Syrian Kurds aligned with the PKK into a regional imbroglio.

One of the most extraord-inary things about the current protests in Iran—the largest since the Green Movement in 2009—is that the very people that they are directed against may well have been the people who started them.

Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince calls the Supreme Leader of Iran “the new Hitler of the Middle East” in an interview with the New York Times, sharply escalating the war of words between the arch-rivals.

There may be a silver but risky lining for Kurdish nationalists in their devastating loss of Kirkuk and other cities on the periphery of their semi-autonomous region as they lick their wounds and vent anger over deep-seated internal divisions that facilitated the Iranian-backed Iraqi blitzkrieg.

The United States and Iran have rarely agreed on how to proceed with nuclear talks or other elements of their bilateral relations. But synergies and similarities between two factions—Iranian hardliners and the hawks of the current US administration—are as counterintuitive as they are profound.

President Donald Trump is expected to announce soon that he will decertify the landmark international deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program, a senior administration official says, in a step that potentially could cause the 2015 accord to unravel.

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly declared that the Iran nuclear deal, known as “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA), was the worst agreement the US has ever signed, and his first priority as president would be to “tear up” the deal. JCPOA has limited Iran's nuclear programme in exchange for removal of all sanctions imposed by the West and the United Nations.

One should not be surprised if Washington re-establishes diplomatic ties with Tehran before the end of President Barack Obama's term in November 2016. However, what will be the fate of the JCPOA after the November 2016 US presidential elections is anyone's guess, particularly if a Republican is elected to the White House.

The Arab Spring had deeply destabilised the Middle East. A new dimension was added to the existing instability on January 4, 2016, when the (Sunni) Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) severed diplomatic ties with (Shia) Iran.